Conservation and environmental science news (original) (raw)
California wood pellet plants canceled amid market decline & public pushback
Bobby Bascomb 2 Jul 2025
Golden State Natural Resources (GSNR), a California nonprofit that focuses on rural economic development, has canceled plans to build two industrial-scale wood pellet plants in the state. The organization cited weakening market conditions and pushback from locals as the drivers of their decision. Conservation groups are hailing the move as a win for forests and communities.
The company planned to source wood from public and private forest land in a 161-kilometer (100-mile) radius of each proposed plant. Their stated aim was to reduce overgrown vegetation and reduce fire risk. The two pellet plants would have produced roughly 1 million tons of pellets annually for use as biomass energy, mostly for export markets.
However, demand for pellets has significantly declined recently. In December 2024, South Korea abruptly announced it would end subsidies for new biomass projects starting in January 2025 and that it would phase down subsidies for power plants using imported forest biomass fuel. In February, the U.K. government announced it would cut in half the subsidies received by a controversial wood-burning power station.
In response to overseas market shifts for wood pellets, GSNR announced it will instead explore the domestic market for wood chips.
“GSNR’s reduced-scale project not only increases forest resiliency, but directly supports sustainable biomass use innovation in accordance with state and federal goals,” GSNR President Patrick Blacklock said in a press release.
Biomass proponents, including GSNR, say thinning forests to make wood pellets is a sustainable, climate-friendly fire-resiliency option because forests can be replanted.
However, Rita Vaughan Frost, a forest advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Mongabay in a video call that those arguments don’t ring true to her.
“They never really told us … how we would actually increase fire resiliency for communities,” Frost said. She added that most forests the company targeted were not the densest forests, “which is where scientific research actually does say that thinning attached with prescribed fire can bring a benefit for reducing fire intensity.”
Industry-scale wood burning can in fact increase carbon emissions, “depending on where that forest is, what kind of forest it is, how old the forest is, what sourcing practices they use, etc.,” Frost said. “And then you’ve got to manufacture the wood pellet, put it on another ship and you’ve got to transport it over the ocean to South Korea.”
GSNR cited more than 5,500 public comments from Californians as another reason for scrapping the pellet plants.
To move forward with wood chips, the organization will have to release a new plan, including a new draft environmental impact report (DEIR).
“GSNR is currently revising the previously released DEIR to reflect these project changes and anticipates recirculating the revised report, with an updated evaluation of potential environmental impacts, in early 2026,” Carolyn Jhajj, communications director with the Rural County Representatives of California, told Mongabay by email.
Banner image: Trees harvested in Stanislaus National Forest. Photo courtesy of Isis Howard.
Kazakhstan to donate 1,500 wild saiga to China after 75 years of local extinction
Shanna Hanbury 2 Jul 2025
Saiga antelopes, among the most ancient living mammals, are set to be reintroduced to China 75 years after they went extinct in the region, thanks to a donation of 1,500 wild individuals from Kazakhstan.
The transfer, announced during a meeting between the countries’ presidents on June 17, is projected to begin in 2026. Its aim is to restore part of the antelope’s historic range, which stretched from Kazakhstan into northwest China until the 1950s.
The donation “is a significant conservation-driven move aimed at restoring the saiga population in China and promoting international collaboration on the conservation of transboundary species,” conservation biologist Zhigang Jiang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Mongabay by email. Jiang co-authored a 2017 study on the saiga antelope’s historic range and its prospects for reintroduction in China.
The saiga (Saiga tatarica), most easily recognized for its large otherworldly nose, lived alongside Ice Age megafauna like woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats thousands of years ago. Until the 1800s, the species could be found as far as Eastern Europe, but its range has contracted ever since.
Disease and poaching pushed the antelope’s population to a historic low of fewer than 30,000 individuals in 2003, before it bounced back following a recovery effort led by the Kazakh Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative.
As of April, there are now an estimated 4.1 million individuals, with more than 98% concentrated in Kazakhstan’s Golden Steppe.
China has tried to reintroduce the saiga into the wild since the 1980s, but low numbers and a limited gene pool from its captive population have largely frustrated previous efforts. A safe translocation from other populations has been considered for decades as a possible but challenging fix.
“For the reintroduction to succeed, it’s crucial to identify habitats for saiga in China,” Jiang said. “Open steppe and semi-desert ecosystems, with low human disturbance and migratory space, will support large herds of saigas.”
Wild saigas were last recorded in China in the Junggar Basin of China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which borders Kazakhstan. But according to Jiang, other sites could also potentially host saiga herds, including areas bordering Xinjiang such as the Qaidam Basin of Qinghai province, northern Gansu, western Inner Mongolia and Ningxia.
“I am expecting the reintroduced saiga from Kazakhstan to return to its historical range in China,” Jiang added.
Banner image: A saiga antelope at the Stepnoi Sanctuary in Russia. Image by Andrey Giljov via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Jaguar population doubles around Brazil’s Iguaçu Falls
Rhett Ayers Butler 2 Jul 2025
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
Once vanishing from view in the dense Atlantic Forest, jaguars are again stalking the undergrowth of Iguaçu National Park in Brazil. Their comeback — numbers have more than doubled in the region since 2010 — is a rare success in the world of large carnivore conservation, reports Mongabay contributor Sarah Brown. The recovery owes much to an unusual alliance of biologists, bureaucrats, border-straddling NGOs and a crochet collective of local women.
The jaguar (Panthera onca) population in the Brazil-Argentina Green Corridor, a 185,000-hectare (457,000-acre) stretch of forest, had collapsed by the late 2000s. Habitat loss and retaliatory killings had reduced sightings to almost none. But cross-border collaboration — between Brazil’s Jaguars of Iguaçu Project and Argentina’s Proyecto Yaguareté — has helped the population grow to at least 105 individuals. It may still be isolated from other jaguar populations, but it is now stable and even cautiously expanding.
Such progress did not come from enforcement alone. Efforts have ranged from ecological monitoring and rapid-response conflict mitigation to educational programs in local schools and technical support for farmers losing livestock to predation. Crucially, outreach efforts have built trust. Landowners who once reached for rifles now call biologists.
A notable innovation is the Jaguar Crocheteers, a women-led artisan group supported by the conservation team. Based in communities bordering the park, they produce jaguar-themed crafts sold to tourists and used in awareness campaigns. For some, the income is substantial. For many, the emotional connection is transformative.
All of the members are “united by the jaguars,” said Claudiane Tavares, a project coordinator and participant.
Institutional backing has followed. Foz do Iguaçu’s airport became the first in Brazil to earn “Jaguar Friendly” certification. In 2024, the Paraná state government adopted a five-year jaguar action plan, outlining measures to improve habitat connectivity, curb hunting and roadkills and reduce conflict. The effort was catalyzed in part by public outcry in 2021 against plans to reopen a road through the park — plans now shelved.
Yet challenges remain. The region’s jaguars remain genetically isolated, and pressure on their habitat continues. Yara Barros, who leads Brazil’s conservation push, warns that long-term survival depends on stitching fragmented habitats together and sustaining political will.
Still, the jaguars’ resurgence offers hope. Where there are jaguars, Barros likes to say, there is life.
In Iguaçu, at least for now, that life is roaring back.
Read the full story by Sarah Brown here.
Banner image: Thanks to cross-border collaboration, the number of jaguars across the Brazil-Argentina Green Corridor has more than doubled in the last 13 years, with 93 individuals across the Iguaçu-Iguazú site. Image © Whitley Awards.
Catholic bishops from Global South call for ambitious climate action ahead of COP30
Kristine Sabillo 2 Jul 2025
Catholic bishops representing more than 800 million people across the Global South, for the first time in history, issued a joint statement demanding an “ambitious implementation” of the Paris Agreement.
“Ten years since the publication of Laudato Si’ and the signing of the Paris Agreement, the countries of the world have not responded with the necessary urgency,” the Catholic Episcopal Conferences and Councils of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean wrote in their appeal for climate justice, referring to the late Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical calling for the urgent need to care for the environment.
Laudato Si’ was released in 2015, and is reflected in the preamble the Paris Agreement on climate change adopted by nearly every country in the world in December that year. Part of the agreement requires that participating countries prepare and maintain their own Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of human-induced climate change.
The bishops’ appeal, launched at a Vatican press office briefing, demanded that “states implement ambitious NDCs on a scale commensurate with the climate emergency.” The call to action comes months after the U.S. pulled out of the Paris Agreement and ahead of the upcoming COP30.
During the briefing, Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão, president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, said, “In Asia, millions of people are already living the devastating effects of climate change, typhoons, forced migration, loss of islands, pollution of rivers.”
Reaffirming the science of limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) “to avoid catastrophic effects,” the statement committed the Catholic Church to several actions, including defending the most vulnerable, strengthening the intercontinental alliance between countries in the Global South, and paving the way for a coalition between the Global North and South.
It urged wealthy nations to pay their ecological debt without further indebting the Global South countries and called for nations to phase out fossil fuels while promoting economic regrowth. It also demanded protection for Indigenous peoples, ecosystems and impoverished communities, including vulnerable groups such as women and youth.
The 34-page appeal said climate finance needs to be transparent and directly delivered to vulnerable communities. It also called on development banks and financial institutions to not invest in fossil fuels or extractive projects.
“It is seriously contradictory to use profits from oil extraction to finance what is presented as an energy transition, without any effective commitment to overcoming it,” the statement read. “It is essential to denounce all attempts to financialise nature,” which turns “elements of creation” such as forests and rivers into “commodities subject to the logic of profit,” it said.
In a press release, Bishop Allwyn D’Silva, chairman of the Office of Human Development of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences, said, “Fossil fuels belong to the past; the future must be powered by clean, renewable energy.”
Banner image of smokestacks by Pixabay via Pexels (Public domain).
South Africa to ban highly toxic pesticide Terbufos
Shreya Dasgupta 2 Jul 2025
In a decision welcomed by advocacy groups and researchers, South Africa’s Cabinet has approved a ban on the import of Terbufos, a highly toxic pesticide linked to the deaths of six children in a South African township in October 2024.
On June 12, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, Minister of Presidency, said the ban will be accompanied by enforcement measures and broader consultations “to identify safer alternatives to Terbufos.”
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) called the decision “a historic milestone in the realisation of critical socio-economic rights, including the right to health, clean water, a safe environment, and adequate food.”
Terbufos, also known as Halephirimi, is legally registered as an agricultural pesticide in South Africa, although the World Health Organization classifies it as a Class 1A organophosphate pesticide, indicating it’s highly toxic.
According to SAHRC, Terbufos has been banned in the EU since 2009 and is prohibited in 13 Southern Africa countries, including Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, Terbufos and roughly 194 other highly hazardous pesticides continue to be used, according to a database maintained by UnPoison, a South African advocacy group focused on reforming pesticide regulation. UnPoison adds that South Africa doesn’t publicly disclose its complete list of registered pesticides.
Used in citrus and vineyards, maize, wheat and sugarcane plantations, Terbufos is considered toxic to mammals, birds, honeybees and aquatic organisms. The pesticide can also cause deaths and long-term health effects like cancers and reduced fertility among exposed farmworkers, Hanna-Andrea Rother, head of the environmental health division at the University of Cape Town, told Mongabay by email.
Rother said Terbufos is also used as a “street pesticide” to control pest infestations in South Africa’s townships, communities where Black citizens were required to live during apartheid. Household pesticides are often ineffective as pests become resistant, so pesticides like Terbufos registered for agricultural use only are used to control rodents, cockroaches, flies, fleas and bedbugs, Rother added.
“When Terbufos is used as a street pesticide, those exposed and at risk are the informal vendors (often women), children who accompany informal vendors when selling and who accidently ingest it,” Rother said.
Although the backlash against Terbufos intensified after the deaths of six children in Naledi in 2024, Rother and her colleagues had previously identified Terbufos as a cause of death among several children in Cape Town.
Rother said she welcomes the government’s initiative to ban Terbufos but cautioned that a ban often involves a phaseout period, meaning a pesticide can continue to be used until stockpiles are gone. “The other concern is that without addressing the problem of rats and pest infestations in the townships, street pesticides will continue to be used,” she said.
The SAHRC said it will continue to monitor the implementation and enforcement of the ban and advocate for a ban on all other highly hazardous pesticides.
Banner image: Agricultural pesticides are often highly toxic. Image via Flickr by C. de Bode/CGIAR (CCBY-NC-SA2.0).
Wildfire kills 2 people in Spain as parts of Europe bake in heat wave
Associated Press 2 Jul 2025
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish authorities say two people have died in northeastern Spain in a wildfire that spread quickly before firefighters brought it under control. Catalan regional president Salvador Illa announced the deaths in a social media post around midnight on Tuesday. The fire came amid a European heat wave that’s sending thermometers soaring again on Wednesday. A total of 6,500 hectares or 16,000 acres was burned before firefighters established a perimeter and declared the blaze under control. About 14,000 people were ordered to stay indoors. That order was lifted late Tuesday.
Read the full story by Joseph Wilson, Associated Press here.
Banner image: In this photo released by Agents Rurals de Catalunya, uncontrolled fire rages across the grasslands in the Segarra region, in the rural province of Lleida, Spain, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/ Agents Rurals de Catalunya, HO)
